External HDD unable to show on my computer

Hello! I have a one year old 2TB Seagate Backup Plus HDD. Suddenly I plugged in and it is not showing in my computer. I checked the device manager it is showing plugged in. I checked the disk management and got shocked as it is asking for initalize and capacity is 49000 TB. I checked again in different windows notebook it is showing the same. Even in linux it is not detecting.
I have 1.2 TB of precious data in that.. I don't know how the hell this happened?, I take care of it like a baby, keep it in hard disk pouch, never dropped.
I tried recovery software provided by seagate but it is not able to analyze the data, not a single file.
I googled and found it may be because of corruption in the primary sector. I am not sure though.
What should I do? My valuable personal data is in that?

 

Sorry to hear about those troubles with the Seagate. But a single drive, let alone the notorious Seagates which I don't trust for a single text file, isn't a backup either of anything either as you have so painfully found out.

How important is the data to you? You may have to pay to get it recovered. With 1.2 TB of data on it, I hope you have deep pockets, or, someone can offer you a process that will work.

 

If not seagate what brand you trust? At least 100GB of photos are precious memories. Songs, shows and movies could be downloaded again. How can I recover back again? Idk anything to get it back.

 

Hitachi/WD (almost exclusively). Nothing else goes into any of the systems/workstations/NAS' I own or manage.

Have a look at how 'recovery companies' would do it: they will replace parts of the drive as needed until they can see the data again.

On the other end, you may get what you need via a software solution. I am not endorsing this product, but a very quick search makes it look promising.

See:
https://www.r-studio.com/?YAHNA600

I can't stress enough that once you have your data back (and in any case, do it with the data you do have now...) have your data safely copied from the original source to two or more markedly different (more, always more...) devices, locations, methods, etc.

A single copy of your data on a 'backup device' isn't a backup. Neither are multiple copies of your data that are stored in the same physical location. Or, neither when multiple copies exist but are using the same backup method (whether that is a single online service (with their 'duplicated' servers), the same model external drive, times 'x' times, or when your data is specialized and needs certain hardware/software/dongles to access it (or worse: data on an Apple service/device).

For hardware you control, don't have the backup device always plugged in and connected. And don't have it being doing 'Auto' backups either. Have two or more external devices that you rotate on a set schedule and ideally, have at least one in a remote location at all times.

BTW, this is the exact reason why I don't ever purchase an extended warranty/protection for any storage medium. There are no warranties that guarantee the DATA, only the drives. Furthermore, once my DATA or my clients' DATA is written to any storage medium, the drive doesn't physically leave my control for any reason. Except by hammer once it dies or I stop needing to use it. This goes for both HDD's and SSD's too. (Yeah; I don't trust recovery companies either).

The idea here is simple. It's our data. We need to ensure we keep it safe. After all, there is nobody out there that cares more for it than we do.

 

I downloaded the full version of R Studio Recovery. I tried scan for an 1 hour and stopped. Not a single file is able to recover with this software. Should I let scan for many hours?

 

At this stage, I would be tempted to remove the drive from the external enclosure its in and try recovering from it from a desktop system.

I don't think an hour is long enough for anything to happen. I would try at least overnight if not a full 24 hours or more (after you have it out of the enclosure).

 

I would tend to agree with removing it from the enclosure and trying to access it from a desktop system. You could get lucky - though disk failure is more likely, you could have a dead interface card.
Good luck.

 

Now the situation is I called seagate and they said you need to send it to us and they have some lab in Netherlands as my HDD is under warranty. They will recover data within 60 days and send it back to my country. Everything is free but the foreign duty taxes will take place by my govt. and that will cost upto the price of my HDD. Also they will provide me a new HDD with that old recovered.
Should I open the drive enclosure and do it myself? Will that void the warranty?

 

How much do you trust some unknown workers in the Netherlands with your DATA? If all you have are pictures and videos from cell phones of you and your friends and family that some kind of versions are already floating around in cyberspace, it may be worth considering. If you have anything more sensitive, I would take it apart myself and take my chances.

Either way, I am surprised that the data would take 60 days to be recovered (I mean, at all). Warranty will definitely be void.

I would not leave that drive 'out there' for 60 days. But, maybe I'm not as trusting as you may be.

Be warned though that even though you will void the warranty by opening up the enclosure, you may still not be easily able to connect it to any computer. In their infinite wisdom, external drive manufacturers now regularly castrate the SATA/POWER connectors too.

 

@Peter Griffin check the drive's SMART with CrystalDiskInfo or something like that, post screenshot.

Depending on what SMART says, but generally yes you should if you care about your data.

USB to SATA bridges are generally less reliable than drives, and on most Seagate drives the bridges are replaceable, not soldered onto the drive.

Check with a different cable before opening, even USB2.0 micro b will do as long as known good.

Technically yes.
A friend of mine opened her drive enclosure in similar situation before sending it for warranty replacement. She was careful and never told them, and Seagate replaced the drive.

 

Well! According to the customer care centre that Seagate has one and only recovery lab in Netherlands and it takes 500-2000$ to recover data and it's for free since I am a loyal customer. Though custom duty will take upto 80$ (I bought HDD for around 75$)

In case if I try to recover by myself you need to say that I need to open and take out drive and connect it in a desktop with SATA cable to motherboard. In case if it is still not able to detect?
As per my google search the problem I get in my HDD is primary sector of my drive got corrupted or broken due to which it is not able to detect. I just need to fix the primary sector without formatting it.
Whenever I open disk management it asks to initialize I don't do that because I think if I do that HDD will format and I will lose my data. What is the best solution for that?

 

Well If you know about my case the HDD I plugged suddenly not detecting. As per my google search the problem I get in my HDD is primary sector of my drive got corrupted or broken due to which it is not able to detect. I just need to fix the primary sector without formatting the drive. Do you still recommend me to open the drive and plug it in a desktop with SATA cable? I think it won't able to detect there as well. I changed my HDD cable and problem is same. So things will be different after opening enclosure and connecting through SATA cable to a desktop?

 

@Peter Griffin, I am not recommending any course of action on your behalf. What I have done is to give you your options (as I knew at the time). The final decision and course of action are yours.

I did learn something from you too (Seagate's drive recovery service for 'loyal customers'). Not that I would ever take advantage of anything like that for the reasons already mentioned.

A google search about the issue may, or may not, be the actual issue in your case. I wouldn't put too much weight on that google 'solution', but it may have been one avenue I went down to recover my data if needed.

At this point, it is your call. Which way are you going to proceed? Let us know.

But try to have more than a single copy of your data on more than a single model of external HDD's, and ideally in multiple locations too.

Relying on warranties and recovery services isn't my idea of having my data safe, reliable, accessible, and secure at all.

 

@Peter Griffin it's hard to tell what exactly happened to the drive. Post a CrystalDiskInfo screenshot and we'll go from there.

Regarding USB vs SATA - I had weird bugs with those. Particularly I had a problem where a Seagate USB drive suddenly stopped working, but sadly I don't remember whether it was the exact same problem as yours - i.e. wrong capacity reported & data inaccessible - or completely undetected by the system. Regardless, putting the drive in a different enclosure with additional power resolved the issue, after that the drive was returned to its regular enclosure and is working to this day. Not that I recommend doing that right away.

With drives, regardless what it looks like you start by looking at its SMART data. It's a fast and easy way to check if the drive has suffered an obvious hardware failure or not.

I'd recommend testdisk for data recovery but that needs a separate drive with enough free space and, while a great piece of software, is not exactly user-friendly. Basically you want to recover the data before attempting to fix anything, if you really value it.

Of course, opinions on the subject may wary. If someone else suggests an easy fix and it'll work right away - great! But you definitely need to start by looking at drive's SMART data, before attempting to do anything.

 

Try connecting the drive directly to a Desktop, at least let you know if it's the enclosure bridge or the actual drive having the issue, if SMART data isn't showing anything alarming.. There are recovery softwares, I used many years back for one of my failed WDs that helped but often those can be quite expensive and only help in certain types of failures, obviuosly if it won't spin or the head is damaged you may need to take/ship it to a repair facility, where they maybe able to get data off the platters.

For consumer drives Hitachi (HGST) and Toshiba are probably the most reliable, HGST is now a division of WD. HGST also happens to be IBMs old hard drive division that was sold to Hitachi, where one of my uncle's worked before the sale. My current NAS drives are Toshibas.

As for failure rates WD and Seagate have flipped back and forth before and also depending on which model looking at some of Backblaze's previous annualized failures, but if I recall right now WD is better.

Ironically like 15-16 years ago the roles were reversed between Seagate and WD, I literally had 3-4 WD drives fail in a span of less than a year (after only a few months of use) each being a replacement for the other different size models, I absolutely hated WD at the time at least the consumer drives. That last replacement 120GB drive failed I think after 2 years after those. However I will admit they had an excellent crosshipping replacement service and support was overall excellent and responsive. Seagate used to be good a while back. However when my dad was consulting via a firm at Seagate over a decade ago he told me at the time IBM consultants told Segate to cut down on backend testing to save costs assuming despite the increase in failures/returns the cost savings would be worth it.

Also always keep two backups, just because a drive is reliable doesn't mean you won't get the occasional dud (Always assume you could be in that 1-2%) or silent data corruption or early drive failure.

 

I installed crystaldisk info and it is just showing my primary SSD on which my laptop is running windows 10. It was unable to detect the external HDD, although it is running smoothly with light and vibrations like a normal mechanical disk. It is able to detect on device manager.
Also I changed to USB cable to amazon basic USB disk cable, the problem is still the same.
I installed testdisk and it has been 1 hour it's scanning rear error. Scanning 1.17 billion cylinders will take days to analyse.
The last option is to remove the casing of the disk and plug it on desktop but currently I am not preferring to go outside as I don't have any desktop now in my home and office.

 

In the past I've used TestDisk to make forensic copies of drives that ""fail"". The data is there and the low level nature of TD pulls that info from the platters w/o altering it in anyway. It does take hours if it's even a small 300GB drive but I've recovered even the hardest to get files from a completely corrupted drive that after recovering the data wouldn't boot or format no matter what method was attempted to reconfigure things on the drive to make it function again.

Personally I just remove the drive whether 2.5 / 3.5 and hook it up to a USB <> Sata cable like USB31C2SAT3

As to moving forward.... I wouldn't go with a prepackaged drive you can find in stores like best buy.... these drives tend to be "enterprise" rejects and they throw a controller board on them and plastic cases to be consumer friendly.

Pick a decent drive like WD Red and an enclosure to make your own for slightly more $ but A LOT more confidence in your data integrity. If you're looking at a small 100GB-256GB in files then look into a series of flash/ssd drives to make multiple copies in case one fails you'll have an actual backup through another vendor.

I picked up a SanDisk pro recently 256GB for ~$60 that performs at Sata SSD speeds

For an alternate brand my 2nd / 3rd choices would have been PNY Pro Elite more of an NVME speed 900MB/s ~$60 for 256GB 3rd would be Arcanite which is going to be slower than the SD above but if you're not moving huge amounts of data consistently it's a decent drive. Tied for 3rd though would be Corsair GTX.

I tend to back up to my server which is running RAID 10 ( 4 disks / 2 pair / 1 mirror of each pair), my laptop is running dual NVME drives ( OS / Storage), I have an NVME in an enclosure for portability / backup.